What Does Open Mean to Google's Andy Rubin?

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SAN FRANCISCOEveryone knows that Google's Android mobile operating system is "open." If you forgot, Google was sure to mention it multiple times throughout the opening keynote of its Google I/0 developer conference today. Likewise, everyone knows what "open" means. It's the opposite of closed, right? However, when it comes to software development, its definition is not all that clear cut. "Open" becomes a fungible word that takes on different meanings depending on the setting or circumstance.

However, here's a more important question: What does "open" mean to Google, especially as it relates to the Google's multi-partner open-source mobile OS, Android. I decided to ask Andry Rubin, Google's senior vice president of mobile, for his definition. Here's his response [edited to clarity]. I think it's a keeper.

"I was waiting for someone to ask that question. So I thank you very much for asking that. You can go down in history as the man who actually Andy Rubin that question. Open source is different than a community-driven project. Android is light on community-driven, somewhat heavy on open source.

Everything we do ends up in the open source repository. It happens in the open source, when the first device is ready, running that platform, and let me explain a scenario to you. We're building a platform, we're not building an app. When you build a platform, the developers have an ecology of APIs; they aggregate APIs, they deprecate APIs. We're always adding new functionality

So when we add new APIs typically, in my opinion, community processes don't work because it's really hard to tell it's done, it's really hard to tell when you're dealing with what is a release and what's rejected. And when you're doing a platform, that doesn't work because developers have to have an expectation that all those APIs are good and complete at a certain date. If it's a community process, an OEM or an operator or somebody could take an early version before those APIs are locked down, start building devices with it and those devices could be incompatible from a third-party application perspective.

So as the shepherd of this ecosystem we made the decision that we're actually going to release the platform as a 1.0, 2.0, 2.1 scenario, and we can actually make sure that those APIs are on all devices that are out at that time.

I think it becomes our job, our responsibility to ensure that that stays together.

A community project is a little more difficult to manage. We still accept submissions, we take a lot of submissions from the community, but in a much more controlled way."

A 25-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance Ulanoff is the former Editor in Chief of PCMag.com.
Lance Ulanoff has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases, ?on line? meant ?waiting? and CPU speeds were measured in single-digit megahertz. He?s traveled the globe to report on a vast array of consumer and business technology.
While a digital veteran, Lance spent his early years writing for newspapers and magazines. He?s been online since 1996 and ran Web sites for three national publications: HomePC, Windows Magazine...
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